China Democratic League

The China Democratic League (CDL) is a socialist and progressive political party in China which was founded on 19 March 1941 as a "third way" from the nationalist Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China. It also had the goal of supporting the Chinese war effort during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and it was supported by many Americans in China after the end of World War II. However, the Kuomintang banned the CDL in 1947, and the CDL was then infiltrated by communists, who allied it with the CPC during the Chinese Civil War. In 1947, the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party left the CDL. In 1997, the CDL adopted a constitution which stated that its goal was to hold high the banner of patriotism and socialism, promote socialist modernization, establish and improve a market economy, and consolidate and expand the patriotic front. By 2012, it had 282,000 members, most of them middle-level and senior intellectuals in the fields of culture, education, science, and technology.